Those Nudies You Send? Yeah, The Government Can See Them

What you need to know about the government monitoring you.

Edward Snowden may not be a household name, but what he just exposed should be household knowledge.

Unfortunately, as John Oliver demonstrated on his HBO show "Last Week Tonight," many people still don't know much about the former system administrator for the CIA turned whistleblower.

During June of 2013, Snowden helped release classified documents to several news outlets and the well-known journalist Glenn Greenwald that revealed a massive, international surveillance program led by the NSA. The journalists who were a part of helping him release thousands of documents also recorded the entire series of events in an Oscar-winning documentary entitled "Citizen Four."

Now, nearly two years later, the national conversation on privacy and surveillance has seemed to dissipate. To some, that's because people just don't care if the government is watching them as long as they are keeping us safe. To others, like Oliver, it's because people don't understand the full breadth of the government's intrusion on your privacy.

In an effort to connect those dots, and to touch on an issue Americans might actually care about, Oliver — quite humorously — shifted the conversation to the simple fact that the government can and has obtained or looked at your "dick pics."

"You mentioned in an interview that the NSA was passing around naked photos of people," Oliver says.

"Yeah, this is something where it's not actually seen as a big deal in the culture of NSA," Snowden responds. "You see naked pictures all of the time."

And from there, Oliver went on to have Snowden explain all the programs currently in work that grant the government access to your nude photos. That, and a basic explanation of the surveillance issues at hand, are all given in the extremely important, entertaining and informative video below.